Hopewell Drugg is as soft as
butter; mebbe he loved 'Cinda Stone; anyhow he merried her after he'd
got the mitten from Amarilla. Huh! ye can't never tell the whys and
wherefores of sech things--not re'lly."

A presidential election would have made little more stir in Poketown
than the coming there of this young man who looked for the position of
school-teacher. Marty brought home word at night to the old Day house
that Mr. Haley had put up at the Lake View Inn; that he had let two of
the older boys try out his motorcycle; that he could pitch a ball that
"Dunk" Peters couldn't hit, even though "Dunk" had played one season
with the Fitchburg team. Likewise, that Mr. Haley was to go before the
school committee that evening. And after supper Marty hastened down
town again to learn how the examination of the young collegian "came
out."

"I do hope," sighed Aunt 'Mira, "that this young man gits the school.
Mebbe Marty will like him, an' go again. I won't say but that the
boy's a good deal better'n he was; he's changed since you've come,
Janice. But he'd oughter git more schoolin'--so he had."

"I met Mr. Haley," said her niece, quietly, "He seems like quite a nice
young man; and, if he has any interest in his work, he ought to give a
good many of the Poketown boys a better start."

For Marty Day was not the only young loafer in the town. There was
always a group of half-grown boys hanging about Josiah Pringle's
harness shop, or the sheds of the Lake View Inn.

In Greensboro there had been a good library and reading-room, and the
Young Men's Christian Association boys and young men had a chance
_there_. Janice knew that her father's influence had helped open these
club-like places for the boys, and so had kept them off the streets.
There wasn't a thing in Poketown for boys to do or a place to go to,
save the stores where the older men lounged. Sometimes, her aunt told
her, men brought jugs of hard cider to the Inn tables, and the boys got
to drinking the stuff.

"Now, if this Nelson Haley is any sort of a fellow, and he gets the
school," murmured Janice to herself, "he may do something."

Marty brought home the latest report from the committee meeting before
they went to bed. Mr. Haley seemed to have made a good impression upon
the three old dry-as-dust committeemen, especially on old Elder
Concannon, the superannuated minister who had lived in Poketown for
fifty years, although he had not preached at the U